


non Angli sed angeli

by feroxargentea



Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: 1066 And All That - freeform, Dubious History, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, pain transfer, the importance of tea
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-24
Updated: 2020-05-24
Packaged: 2021-02-28 17:54:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,460
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23361298
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/feroxargentea/pseuds/feroxargentea
Summary: “We’re not so different, you and me. Fallen and unfallen, it’s just a flip of the coin.”Crowley doesn’t know if that’s true. But Aziraphale has gone limp in his arms again, his breathing laboured and slowing, and there’s nothing left to lose.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 24
Kudos: 81
Collections: Hurt Comfort Exchange 2020





	non Angli sed angeli

**Author's Note:**

  * For [celtic7irish](https://archiveofourown.org/users/celtic7irish/gifts).



> Written for celtic7irish for the Hurt Comfort exchange 2020. Thank you to cj2017 for beta!  
> With apologies to Gaiman and Pratchett, Sellar and Yeatman, historians, and God (possibly).

* * *

“Ooh,” Crowley says, craning his neck to see the whole battlefield. “It’s kicking off big time now. Battle of Hastings, here we _go.”_

Beside him, Aziraphale winces as a line of Norman knights appears over the horizon, not a hundred yards from where he and Crowley are standing.

“I do wish they didn’t have to be so...swordy,” he says. “Who started it this time, your lot or mine?”

“Mine, I think. Wait a sec.” Crowley fishes in his hauberk until he finds the lead tablet with his orders. “Let’s see, _‘Thou shalt foment maximal carnage, slaughter and desolation until the field runs red with English blood.’”_ He flips to the reverse, where a line of wobbly Latin capitals reads _“MAY M. VITELLIUS LEPIDUS BE CURSED WITH BOILS AND LICE, FOR HE HAS DEBAUCHED MY WIFE”,_ and then, as an afterthought on the line below, _“AND SON”_.

“Recycled curse tablet?” Aziraphale asks.

“Yup.” Crowley tucks it back into his chainmail. “That Lord Beelzebub’s a tight bugger, using these. Here I am, slaving away _fomenting_ twenty-four-seven. How hard would it be to show me a little appreciation? Ink, vellum, touch of gold-leaf illumination in the margins, that’s all I ask.”

Aziraphale nods. He’s partial to a nice bit of vellum himself.

Crowley looks down the slope towards the swarms of English pikemen struggling in the mud. Further up the ridge, swordsmen from both armies have already started hacking each other apart. Sometimes he wonders why Head Office bothers sending him orders at all. Humans don’t need encouragement for this sort of thing. They do it all by themselves. They’re talented that way.

Aziraphale leans closer, raising his voice above the tumult. “I suppose it’s too late to stop them.”

Crowley bares all his teeth in his best evil grin. It’s pretty convincing; he’s had millennia of practice.

“You could give it a bash,” he says. “Give ’em a pep talk, peace and harmony and all that malarkey. I’ll watch, pick up the pieces afterwards.”

“I could _make_ them stop,” Aziraphale says. “I mean, _MAKE_ them stop.”

“Yeah, but have Upstairs given you the go-ahead for a whole interventionist, miracle-type fandango?”

Aziraphale hunches his shoulders and doesn’t reply. That’s a no, then. Crowley just manages to resist glancing sideways at him, but he can tell Aziraphale’s lips are pursed. The angel is terribly cute when he’s in a huff.

“Fine,” Aziraphale says at last. “If we can’t stop them, who do you think is going to win?”

“Ooh, tricky one. Let’s see, the Normans have got cavalry and massed archers, and the home team have got a bunch of knackered peasants with pointy sticks and no understanding of the offside rule. I wouldn’t bet your last Saxon penny on a no-score draw.”

Aziraphale tuts. “It’s not a game, Crowley! Besides, football hasn’t even been invented yet.”

“’Course it has! Not the _word,_ maybe, but give any bunch of humans a few pints of something fermented and a spherical object and they’ll start having a kickabout.” In the corner of his eye, Crowley spots half a dozen knights booting around just such a spherical object, still encased in its helmet. Taking Aziraphale’s shoulder, he turns him away before he can notice. “Add a few more pints,” he continues, “and you’ve got the makings of a decent riot. It’s basic demonology.”

Anyway, he thinks, it doesn’t really matter who wins. Technically the English own this muddy, hellforsaken island, which is presumably why Head Office reckoned it would be a Good Solid Evil Day’s Work to make them lose, but a bit of new blood wouldn’t hurt them, not in Crowley’s opinion. Bit of new cuisine, too. The _word_ cuisine, for a start. Pottage à la mode. Some decent plonk. Château du Conquereur 1066. Do ’em good.

“So, angel,” he says, “if you’re not here to stop the battle, what _are_ you here for? Apart from your sheer decorative value, of course.”

Aziraphale tears his gaze away from the carnage. “Oh, er, just the one miraculous rescue. Some religious chappie who’s been bothering us with petitions and whatnot, praying we’ll intervene and save him. I do wish Gabriel wouldn’t encourage that sort of thing.”

“One of the English?” Crowley asks. “Which one?”

“I’m not entirely sure, to be honest. One of the house-carls, but they all look rather alike when they’re done up in their helmets and so forth.”

“Yeah, always a tad hard to tell good guys from bad when they’re stabbing each other to death.”

“Mm,” Aziraphale agrees, and then, in belated reaction, “... _decorative value?”_

Crowley smirks. The trick is to always add enough sarcasm for plausible deniability.

“Anyway,” Aziraphale goes on hurriedly, although he’s smiling that tiny private smile that makes it all worthwhile, “he’ll probably be fine whether I intervene or not. It’s the peasants I’m more worried about. They’re not properly equipped at all, poor things.”

Crowley hums under his breath. He was there last month when the English fought off the Danes far up north. Ninety-nine percent of them don’t care what nationality their overlords are. They’ve been force-marched from one end of the country to the other, less than three weeks after they tackled the last bunch of invaders. All they want to do is go home, finish harvesting their barley, and salt down the bacon to see their families through winter.

“It’s the way of the world,” he says. “And it was God who made the bloody thing in the first place, so...”

“Hmm. And that comet’s not helping matters, either,” Aziraphale complains, gesturing upwards. “It’s taken the heart out of the poor sods.”

Crowley glances up at it. Halley’s Comet, or the As-Yet Unnamed Comet, as he should probably call it, is hanging above them like a flaming arrow that’s lost its way, or a misplaced scrap of appliqué that some cack-handed seamstress has stitched to the backdrop by mistake. It’s an omen of sorts; he can’t tell if it’s good. Half the English think it’s a portent of doom, and the other half keep ducking in case it sets their hair alight. Either way, it’s putting them off their game.

“We could give it a nudge,” Aziraphale suggests. “A bit of a heave-ho, to even up the odds.”

“A _heave-ho?”_

“You know what I mean,” Aziraphale says. “Just a tiny smidgen of miracle, to re-time it so it turns up for the victory parade instead.”

“We can’t do that!”

“Why not?”

“Because it would make astronomers’ heads explode! Comets don’t just whizz around at random, they _orbit_ stuff, there’s a _pattern!_ If we go reaching in and tweaking it, humans are going to have to invent a whole new kind of maths or,” Crowley waves his hands, “timey-wimey stuff to explain it away.”

“Are they? Judging by the manuscripts I’ve managed to uncover so far, England is rather short on advanced mathematicians. Or, in fact, anyone who can count.”

Crowley snorts. “Well, yeah, none of these clots would have a clue how a comet works. Give them an elliptical orbit and they’d probably try to make soup out of it. But once they figure it out...”

“Fine, fine,” Aziraphale says. “It was just a thought. Ooh, look, I think that might be the chap I was assigned to watch for. The one over there with the cross on his chest, he looks religious-y. I’ll just pop over and...”

He steps forward without looking where he's going, all his attention on the man in question. Crowley opens his mouth to say “watch out for the archers”, but the first syllable is still forming on his lips when he sees Aziraphale hesitate and then crumple to the ground.

“Aziraphale?” he yells, stumbling forward. “Az―”

The angel’s wings have collapsed around him in a heap of trembling feathers, and there’s an arrow embedded in his shoulder, its point buried deep in his chest. Crowley grabs him and hauls him into his lap.

“Aziraphale?” he hisses, pulling the edge of the chainmail from the angel’s neck. Bright arterial blood is already bubbling through the metal links from where the arrow-shaft is lodged between hauberk and helmet. More arrows are raining around them, whistling past and thudding into the ground. Without even thinking, Crowley runs a white-hot fingertip down the hauberk, slicing its links apart with hellfire. He yanks it loose and flings it upwards, where a click of his fingers keeps it spread above them like chainmail wings.

“Aziraphale?” he says, pleading now. He strokes the angel’s hair back from his forehead, running shaky fingers through the white-blond curls. It’s been centuries since he last got to touch them. They’re the palest thing left on the battlefield, now that Aziraphale’s feathers are muddied and bloodstained. Not many eleventh-century humans live long enough for their hair to turn white, what with the buboes and dropsy and ague and quinsy and scrofula and pox and bloody flux to contend with. Not to mention the battles.

Crowley takes a deep breath and clasps Aziraphale closer. It’s just an arrow, an ordinary Norman arrow, but the bloody thing has been dipped in hellfire, and if he catches the demon who did that, he’ll bloody well...

He takes another shaky breath. He can’t intervene, he knows he can’t, however much he wants to. All hell will break loose – literally – if Lord Beelzebub catches him saving an angel. One sniff of demonic intervention and the Arrangement is toast.

He feels Aziraphale stir in his arms, his eyes half-opening.

“Crowley?” the angel gasps.

“I’m here! I’m right here, and you’re fine,” Crowley says, lying wildly. “You’re going to be fine.”

“Don’t w-worry, Crowley, it’s only dis...discorporation. I’ll c-come back.”

“No!” Crowley hisses. “They’ll never leave it at that, you know they won’t, not once they start poking their noses in. We’ll never get this back. We’ll never get _us_ back.”

“I’m sorry,” Aziraphale whispers. “I don’t think I can...”

“You _have_ to.” Crowley hugs him even closer, shaking him a little. “Aziraphale, you _have_ to.”

Aziraphale’s eyes flutter closed. He’s paler than ever, the smear of red down his chest the only brightness about him. Crowley closes his own eyes, trying to marshal his thoughts. He can’t afford to draw Management’s attention, so a blatant miracle is out, however tempted he is. But Heaven was expecting one already, just a small one, the worth of a single human’s life. If he can use exactly the same amount of healing the angel would have used on Religious Bloke...

“No,” Aziraphale gasps, as if he can read Crowley’s thoughts. “They’ll know. They’ll _know_ it’s you.”

“Nah they won’t,” Crowley says, with all the fake assurance he can summon. “We’re not so different, you and me. Fallen and unfallen, it’s just a flip of the coin.”

He doesn’t know if that’s true. But Aziraphale has gone limp in his arms again, his breathing laboured and slowing, and there’s nothing left to lose.

Gripping Aziraphale’s shoulder, he focusses the demonic forces in his mind until he’s dizzy with the pressure. Then he grasps the arrow-shaft and yanks hard, then harder. Power wells up, blood wells up and blackness fills the world, and somewhere in the midst of it he can hear Aziraphale screaming, a tiny, distant noise almost blotted out by the roar of energy, all hell set loose in a devil’s hands.

He blinks hard, and in an instant the rush is gone, the power drained away as if it never existed. He’s back on Earth, with the angel sprawled in his arms. Aziraphale is pale and panting, but he’s _alive._

“Fuck,” Crowley gasps. “That was...that was...”

He doesn’t know what it was. He stares down at Aziraphale again. The angel’s alive and his wound is healed, but he’s still as white as a sheet. Crowley can’t miracle the pain away – that would draw too much attention, after everything he’s done already – but he _can_ transfer it. He presses his palm to the newly healed skin and concentrates again.

“Arghh!” Aziraphale yelps, just for a split-second. Then he stops and blinks slowly, and then sits up. “Um, I mean ‘ouch’, maybe?” He turns to look at Crowley. “What did you—”

“Nothing,” Crowley says, gritting his teeth as the borrowed pain lances through him, an arrow’s worth straight through his chest. “Come on, we need to get going.”

Aziraphale is still looking puzzled. “Right. Um, wait, is that chap okay? The one I was supposed to be protecting?”

“Yup, he’s fine,” Crowley says, without bothering to check. It might be true, and he doesn’t care either way. He flips the bloodied arrow over in his hand a couple of times and then flings it away, noticing just too late that it’s sizzling slightly.

“Whoops,” he mutters, rubbing the last trace of hellfire from his fingers. The arrow flies up far harder than he intended, leaving a faint trail of smoke behind it. As he watches it, it sails right across the battlefield before coming down with a resounding _thwuuuck_ into King Harold’s eye.

“Bollocks,” Crowley says mildly. “Oh well. One-nil to the Normans. Come on, angel, let’s go and have some tea.”

* * *

Actual tea, of course, is not forthcoming in eleventh-century England. They do, however, find a tavern serving small beer and honey-cakes, and it’s a relief to be off the battlefield before the victors start stripping and looting the bodies. Not that Crowley is squeamish about that sort of thing exactly, but it would upset Aziraphale, and Crowley’s hurting too much to deal with that right now.

He sprawls sideways in his seat, surreptitiously taking the weight off his aching shoulder.

“Cakes all right?” he asks.

Aziraphale looks up from his plate. “Really rather good, actually,” he says, brushing crumbs from his lips.

“Have another.”

“Oh, I probably shouldn’t.”

“Go on.”

“Well, if you _insist.”_ Aziraphale takes another honey-tart and bites into it, beaming. Cakes are a temptation he’s always open to.

Crowley, watching him, has the otherworldly sensation he often has of slippage, of time tugging at him. Perhaps what he told Aziraphale is true after all; perhaps they really are two sides of the same coin, immortal souls forever linked, spinning in endless freefall. There’s a trick to falling, he knows by now. It's no problem at all, as long as you never hit the ground.

He lifts his pint of small beer and clinks it against Aziraphale’s.

“Cheers, angel,” he says. “A pleasure, as always.”

Aziraphale’s eyes narrow for a moment as if he can read Crowley’s thoughts. Then he smiles that sweet, shy smile of his that makes Crowley’s chest ache worse than any arrow-shaft, and he lifts his own pint.

“The pleasure’s all mine, Crowley,” he says. “Here’s to the next time.”


End file.
